VYRE's Icelandic reseller, TM Software, and Icelandair have been working together on one of the biggest web solution project ever executed in Iceland. The project evolved around the installation of Vyre Unify, renewing the websites with competitive advantage in mind and the ambition to increase sales and service on the websites.

This project was vast and about 30-40 employees of TM Software and Icelandair have been involved. Mr. Halldór Harðarson, marketing manager at Icelandair, says that: “The goal of Icelandair is to increase sales over the Internet by directing sales and marketing efforts in that direction and build up a powerful web solution to support these efforts. Thereby, the company can streamline the sales process and decrease the cost for the benefit of the company and our customers”. Today most bookings in Iceland are done over the Internet and is also increasing abroad.

The technical goal of the project was to improve the architecture, increase the websites’ uptime, reorganise the processes as well as improve the access of employees and customers to web-based activities and information.

The implementation of VYRE Unify, as the new content management system and portal was fundamental to the project. In addition to this the project included:

* Redesign the nine websites of Icelandair
* Rewrite functionality modules
* Increase functionality and redesign the booking system
* Redesign and develop a business layer on top of the customer database

Easy access to information
The new websites were designed with the aim that it would be as easy as possible for users to book their trips and access information. To ensure this Icelandair used the Webtrends Web Analytics and Web Statistics software to analyse the behaviour of users on their websites. With this analysis as guidance the booking processes, sitemap and the information flow were redefined.

Clear and easily accessed shortcuts were set up where the user can access most information with one click of the mouse. Among them are; departures and arrivals, access to a Lucky Fares club, e-tickets and flying routes. The service has also been made more interactive in the way that e.g. users can view the flying schedule and thereby see all the flying routes of Icelandair and then book flights based on the route that is chosen. Users can also receive various information about the route such as weather, flying time and distance.

A significant work to improve access for the disabled was performed, to ensure that those who have difficulty reading a computer screen can nonetheless obtain information from the website.

Redesign of the booking process
The main goal of Icelandair is to increase efficiency with enhanced sales over the Internet. One of the largest parts of the project was therefore to make changes to the booking process and make it less complicated. Many of the most common services are now more dynamic with the use of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML), which makes the websites faster and users are able to change areas without refreshing the whole website. This new service makes it among others easier for users to finish their booking at a much more convenient and easier way. The calendar on the sites has also been redesigned and browsing through airports is now much faster, because the users do not have to download the whole site, even though they have made some changes to their preferences.

Access
A significant work to improve access for the disabled was performed, to ensure that those who have difficulty reading a computer screen can nonetheless obtain information from the website. The implementation of Vyre Unify makes this possible by providing a clear separation of content and presentation. The structure of the software code on the web makes it also possible for screen readers to understand the structure of the website which makes it easier for blind people and those who use screen readers to browse on the web. Great emphasise was also placed on user tests where the typical user of an Icelandair website got the opportunity to try the web and express his/hers opinion. The web consultancy, Sjá ehf., was in charge of the user tests in Iceland and other consultancies made the tests abroad.

Response time
One of the goals of the project was to decrease the time users spent waiting for answers to their requests, as well as making it more dynamic, which in most cases means waiting longer for information. However, with the new Icelandair websites this is not the case. Now, the waiting time is much shorter than before. Better procedures, less complicated templates and newer technology scuh as VYRE Unify and Ajax, has shortened the response time immensely.
Ajax makes it possible to update one part of the website at a time. Therefore, there is no need to download the whole site, but only the part that changed with a new request of the user. TM Software and VYRE Unify also fulfil the requirements of CSS ZHTML standards and uses the design and presentation that the greatest specialists regard as the best one available today, often called “One True Layout”. This ensures simple templates, better presentation and makes all maintenance easier.

Efficiency and service
Web services are very important part of websites today and that does also apply to Icelandair. About 100 web services were built for more than 30 functionality modules on the new websites, which are designed according to the Java JSR 168 Portal standard, supported by VYRE Unify. To ensure the response time with other systems of Icelandair a special communication layer, based on Java Spring and Hibernate, called WSL (Web Service Layer) was built into the system. The main aim of WSL is to ensure the highest possible uptime and a good response time between functionality units and that all connections will become as streamlined as possible in comparison with the usual SOAP communication that result in greater system load.

Vyre Unify
Icelandair has put itself on the forefront on the Internet among airlines today with the installation of Vyre Unify, new structure and new websites. Mr. Hjörtur Þorgilsson, Senior Vice President of Information Technology at Icelandair, says: “The system can lead to great opportunities that will make all future work at Icelandair much easier. VYRE Unify is a very powerful web system that enables us to take the next steps and design even more powerful web solutions in the future. We did put a lot of effort into finding a system that would fulfil all our expectations and requirements and it has been proven that Vyre was the right choice.“